The Tower of Bones Read Online Free PDF Page A

now she looked down at them, were webbed. As those hands were torn from his face, his eyes blinked open and Kate saw their startling turquoise colour. The succubi fell to their knees on the chamber floor, beating the ground with their wide-splayed hands and chanting, in awe and rising terror themselves:
    ‘Feed the Beast! Feed the Beast! Feed the Beast!’
    Kate had heard them refer to ‘the Beast’ before, without understanding what they really meant. Surely they were not referring disrespectfully to their mistress? The Gargs had stopped whispering among themselves and were standing stiffly erect, their eyes reflecting the bloodred light that permeated the chamber – as if even their relish was now muted by fear, as with liquid hisses of excitement and a flush-like darkening of their naked skins, they awaited the cruel conclusion of the spectacle.
    But the boy Cill would not sing easily. Already his waiflike body was changing hues madly, his instincts for the colours and patterns that would offer the camouflage of invisibility. But there was no escape here.
    On their perilous journey sailing the Snowmelt River,the Great Witch had sent one of her succubi to seduce Kate’s friend, Mark, into betraying them. Brave Mark had fought back against the power of the succubus. But the struggle had injured him, robbing him of his confidence and forcing him to question his loyalty to his friends. Kate hated the Witch for that. And now, in spite of her own terror, she watched for the slightest opportunity to thwart her.
    If only she could divert the Witch’s attention from the Cill, to free him even for the briefest moment from that horrible focus!
    But what could she do? The consequence of provoking the Witch in the act of consummating her hunger terrified Kate.
    Yet such was her terror it alerted all her senses. There was something at the back of her mind, a memory prickling through her terror. Alan’s power, the ruby triangle in his brow, had been conferred on him by a strange old woman – Granny Dew. And Mo had called Granny Dew the Earth Mother. Granny Dew had given Kate a lesser power in the shape of an egg-shaped crystal.
    Kate tried her best to remember the circumstances when Granny Dew had given her the crystal. But no clear memory would come to mind.
    A feeling of hopelessness invaded Kate’s heart. The Cill child was losing its resistance. Faltana’s lashing was wearing it down so it was about to sing.
    Please – just let me remember!
    In the palm of her right hand she felt a throbbing sensation, a familiar distraction – the power given to her by Granny Dew. She recalled the extraordinary experience, it seemed so very long ago now, when, at the centre of a labyrinth of caves, Granny Dew had led Kate and her friends into a chamber whose walls shone and glittered. Here, Granny Dew had changed Kate’s mobile phone into a beautiful egg-shaped crystal, a soft luminescent green in colour and alive with shades of gold, like autumn leaves caught up in the whirls and eddies of the wind. Kate had lost her crystal – she didn’t recall how. But now she also recalled that there had been some magical union of the crystal with her body and mind. The same patterns of living colour had appeared in the palm of her right hand. The crystal had changed her – as the crystals had somehow changed Alan and Mark. They had enabled them to make contact mind-to-mind not only with each other but also with the Olhyiu and anybody else they met in this world.
    Falteringly, tremblingly, Kate reached out now through her mind and attempted to make contact, mind-to-mind, with the Cill child. Was she imagining it, or was there a tiny response, a movement of his head towards her, a slow blink of his eyelids, which was followed by a strange contraction and then widening of the turquoise irises?
    He had sensed something. But it wasn’t enough.
    The Cill appeared to have erected some kind of protective mental shield. If only she could penetrate the